\n<\/p>\n
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist darling, trotted out the old Tupac line that he\u2019d obviously rehearsed dozens of times:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I wish the words of Tupac from the 90\u2019s weren\u2019t still prescient, but they continue to be true for too many which is that we always have money for war and not to feed the poor.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He\u2019s pointing at the war in Iran, claiming the federal government has blown \u201cupwards of 28 billion dollars killing thousands of people\u201d while American families scrape by. It\u2019s a tidy little sermon. It\u2019s also a complete lie. Never mind that this same crowd spent the Biden years printing money and throwing it around like confetti, igniting the inflation that actually hammered grocery bills and gas prices.<\/span><\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s claim isn\u2019t just wrong, it\u2019s a deliberate con designed to make you feel guilty for wanting a strong country.<\/span><\/p>\n According to the latest breakdowns of total U.S. government spending (federal plus state and local, roughly $11 trillion for FY 2025), we are not a nation that \u201calways has money for war.\u201d National defense clocks in at a measly eight percent. Meanwhile, social welfare programs and education gobble up a combined 66 percent when you include veterans\u2019 benefits. <\/span>Two-thirds<\/span><\/i> of the entire pie goes to the very \u201cfeed the poor bucket\u201d that the left pretends is starved.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet here we are, being told by the most useless political class on the planet that the military is eating the budget alive. <\/span>It isn\u2019t.<\/span><\/i> Actually, we\u2019d be far better off prioritizing national defense over the welfare apparatus that has spent trillions since <\/span>LBJ\u2019s Great Society<\/span><\/a>, which somehow managed to entrench dependence rather than eradicating poverty.<\/span><\/p>\n Decades of data show us that <\/span>massive spending correlates with higher single motherhood,<\/span><\/a> lower workforce participation among the able-bodied poor, and generational traps. Material hardship has eased thanks to the checks themselves, but the behavioral poverty \u2014\u00a0the broken families, the work disincentives, the \u201cwelfare cliffs\u201d where earning a few extra bucks costs you benefits \u2014\u00a0has proven stubbornly immune to spending. Trillions of dollars later, and the Left\u2019s solution is always more. Shocking.<\/span><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t an argument against helping people in genuine need. It\u2019s an argument against pretending we haven\u2019t been trying, and it\u2019s absolutely an argument for why national defense cannot be the scapegoat.<\/span><\/p>\n Funding the military isn\u2019t just defensible, it\u2019s non-negotiable. National Defense exists to keep the lights on, the borders secure, and the homeland from turning into a playground for our enemies. A strong military is not optional in a world full of revisionist powers like China, Russia, and Iran. It deters wars, not just fights them.<\/span><\/p>\n On Israel specifically, the one Mamdani loves to demagogue, U.S. aid is no blank check to \u201ckill thousands.\u201d It\u2019s a strategic bargain. <\/span>Annual baseline support r<\/span><\/a>uns about $3.8 billion, almost all of it spent on American-made weapons that flow back into U.S. factories and jobs. That\u2019s roughly .34% of America\u2019s total defense and intelligence budget. Israel spends around 6% of its own GDP fighting our shared enemies, extending American reach without us stationing endless troops there. That\u2019s not charity. That\u2019s leverage through intelligence sharing, missile defense technology, and a stable democratic outpost in a hellscape region. The alternative is ceding the Middle East to the mullahs and their proxies while we pretend isolationism works. It doesn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n If we\u2019re going to talk about who actually mishandles money like a drunk sailor on shore leave, that\u2019s the Democrats. The Joe Biden years proved it in living color. <\/span>Cumulative inflation hit 21.5%<\/span><\/a> from 2021 to 2025. Groceries and gas skyrocketed \u2014 <\/span>gasoline alone up 31%<\/span><\/a> \u2014 while real inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for private sector workers fell about 4%. Median household income, after inflation, barely budged or dipped in key areas. The \u201cvibecession\u201d wasn\u2019t a vibe. It was working families watching their paychecks evaporate while the administration bragged about \u201crecord job creation\u201d that included millions of people simply re-entering the workforce after COVID lockdowns they prolonged.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet Democrats keep floating a utopian wishlist like it\u2019s free: paid family leave, free community college, universal healthcare. They sound like middle schoolers running for class president \u2014 and frankly, there isn\u2019t much difference. They lecture Republicans about fiscal responsibility while their own policies ballooned the debt, fueled inflation, and left more Americans financially strained than at any point in recent memory.<\/span><\/p>\n The hypocrisy is Olympic-level. They want America naked and vulnerable so the scavengers \u2014 China, Iran, cartels, Leftists \u2014 can feast. Weakness is the point. A strong military requires priorities, and our military deserves the best because they are the best. However, the left\u2019s vision requires an endless spigot of other people\u2019s money and a populace too distracted by bread and circuses to notice the empire of debt rising around them.<\/span><\/p>\n No one is saying we should cut every social program tomorrow or ignore the genuinely needy. But pretending the military is the budget villain while two-thirds of spending flows into programs that have failed to break the cycle of poverty is gaslighting on an industrial scale.<\/span><\/p>\n The left doesn\u2019t want to feed the poor. They want to buy votes and erode self-reliance. They don\u2019t want a robust defense. They want a paper tiger that easily folds to third-worldism.<\/span><\/p>\n If this country takes its governing cues from a failed rapper turned big-city mayor whose deepest policy insight comes from a 1990s rap lyric, we\u2019re going to need that military a lot sooner than we think.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n